Disable onboard Status LEDs?

drewsed · August 3, 2020, 10:24pm

Hi,

is it possible to disable the onboard LEDs of the Heltec board at the moment or do I have to build my own firmware editing the code? Think this would be a nice feature for both, a repeater node and a handheld device.

I dont want a plane landing nearby while looking for good exposition of the antenna

dafeman · August 3, 2020, 10:28pm

Currently you would have to edit and build the firmware yourself. But with the addition of a repeater mode in the pipeline, I’m sure it’ll be an option/LED’s disabled (for repeater mode anyway).

zjwhitehead · August 5, 2020, 2:07pm

It looks like for now your best bet is to adjust the LED_PIN lines to be undefined.
Should be able to do that here depending on which board you have.

github.com

meshtastic/Meshtastic-device/blob/master/src/configuration.h#L262


#undef GPS_TX_PIN
#define GPS_RX_PIN 36
#define GPS_TX_PIN 13 // per @eugene

#define I2C_SDA 21 // I2C pins for this board
#define I2C_SCL 22

#define RESET_OLED 16 // If defined, this pin will be used to reset the display controller

#define VEXT_ENABLE 21 // active low, powers the oled display and the lora antenna boost
#define LED_PIN 25     // If defined we will blink this LED
#define BUTTON_PIN                                                                                                               \
    0 // If defined, this will be used for user button presses, if your board doesn't have a physical switch, you can wire one
      // between this pin and ground

#define RESET_GPIO 14    // If defined, this pin will be used to reset the LORA radio
#define RF95_IRQ_GPIO 26 // IRQ line for the LORA radio
#define DIO1_GPIO 35     // DIO1 & DIO2 are not currently used, but they must be assigned to a pin number
#define DIO2_GPIO 34     // DIO1 & DIO2 are not currently used, but they must be assigned to a pin number

#elif defined(TLORA_V2_1_16)

I agree that should be an option mode (perhaps dark_mode) where no lights are enabled.

drewsed · August 5, 2020, 2:31pm

thanks @zjwhitehead, good to know. For now I had no free time to build a firmware. For my heltec boards I will uncomment line 216, great.

But I’m afraid, there is a second red LED which is switched on all the time. Need to find out whether it is connected to 5V net or a IO pin.

Edit:
see https://github.com/Heltec-Aaron-Lee/WiFi_Kit_series/blob/master/SchematicDiagram/WiFi_LoRa_32(V2)/WIFI_LoRa_32_V2(868-915).PDF

D4 is connected to 5V and D6 to GPIO25. So i need to remove the LED or cover it or maby power the device by an LiPo, then I think there is no component for 5V generation. Looks like a charging indicator though.

eriktheV-king · August 5, 2020, 4:28pm

I permanently get rid of power LEDs or their resistor (whichever is easiest) by physically them, once I know the board works okay. A little blow with the rework heatgun or a small soldering iron will save you a few mAmpH. The cold an ugly solution of flicking it off the board with a screwdriver might also work.oouahh!

drewsed · August 5, 2020, 4:52pm

Yeah, I think removing the resistors and solder them on one side only is the way to go. In this case they remain on the board and won’t get lost til I want to to revert to original state one time.

Edit:
I removed both LEDs, because I only could find the resistor for the charging indicator LED, because there seems to be no PCB layout available.

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Disable onboard Status LEDs?

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